Sustainable Fuel’s Role in Reducing Emissions Adds to Production Need

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March 08, 2021

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by Graham Warwick (Aviation Week) ... The scale-up challenge is enormous. Barely 0.01% of the 96 billion gal. (364 billion liters) of jet fuel consumed by the world’s airlines in 2019 was sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). But announced projects should boost production from just 60 million gal. in 2020 to 1 billion gal. per year by 2025, says the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI). And unannounced projects could add another 1 billion gal. per year, taking the industry close to its target of increasing SAF use to 2% by 2025, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says.

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Released in September 2020 by the cross-industry Air Transport Action Group (ATAG), the Waypoint 2050 sustainability blueprint identifies three scenarios for how the aviation industry can meet its goal. In all of them, SAF is essential. The most aggressive SAF deployment scenario would need 116-151 billion gal. per year of SAF production by 2050. Even the most aggressive fielding of electric and hydrogen propulsion technologies would still require 62-90 billion gal. per year.

And that is just to meet aviation’s aspirational goal of halving its net CO₂emissions by 2050, from 2005 levels.

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Identifying the rapid and global scaling up of SAF as “perhaps the single largest opportunity to meet and go beyond the industry’s 2050 goal,” Waypoint 2050 concludes aviation will likely need 150-170 billion gal. per year by 2050. The report recommends airlines “make substantial and bold SAF offtake agreements at an early stage,” governments prioritize aviation as a user of alternative fuel and the energy industry “demonstrate substantial commitment to sustainable aviation fuel production and scale-up.”

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In January 2020, France released a road map to replace 2% of jet fuel with SAF by 2025 and 5% by 2030, with the objective of reaching 50% by 2050. In September, Germany published a draft law requiring airlines to use 1% SAF by 2028 and 2% by 2030—but only “power-to-liquid” synthetic fuels produced using renewable electricity and captured CO₂.

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One trend in 2020 was a shift of the limited SAF supply to cargo airlines as the pandemic hit passenger operations. Shell Aviation began supplying SAF from World Energy to Amazon Air in the U.S. and from Neste to DHL Express at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Atlas Air conducted a test flight, and Air France KLM Martinair Cargo introduced a program enabling shippers and forwarders to book flights using a percentage of SAF.

Also, 2020 saw an uptick of interest in Asia, with All Nippon Airways (ANA) signing a contract with Neste for SAF supply at Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita airports. And Japan Airlines conducted the first commercial flight with SAF produced in Japan, using a fuel made from discarded cotton clothing.

Airlines also involved their customers. Microsoft purchased SAF credits from SkyNRG for employee flights on Alaska Airlines, and Deloitte signed a contract with Delta Air Lines for corporate travel using SAF from Neste. The deals echo the corporate biofuel program pioneered by KLM and SkyNRG.

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The increased interest in e-fuels, and in hydrogen for zero-emission aviation, has some concerned that it could distract attention and investment from the near-term scale-up of SAF production using proven biomass-to-fuel pathways. “The issue with both is that they move in the wrong direction with respect to fuel cost and total societal investment, while the environmental improvement is not necessarily greater,” says Steve Csonka, CAAFI executive director.

Much will come down to how governments legislate and incentivize SAF.

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Legislation is already before Congress. The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Act introduced by Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Calif.) in February proposes several policy options to incentivize SAF production, including an investment tax credit to finance new facilities, funding support and a federal aviation-only low-carbon fuel standard.

As in Europe, the U.S. aviation industry is wary of any blending mandate.

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A key challenge facing aviation in scaling up capacity is that plants built to produce SAF can also produce biodiesel and do so at higher margins for the fuel producers because of the less rigorous specifications.

“Of greatest interest to the airline industry is a specific blenders tax credit at a level that would make a difference,” Young says. “We’re looking at emerging proposals for up to a $2-per-gal. credit for SAF, in lieu of the existing $1 biodiesel blenders tax credit.” A tax credit at that level would incentivize SAF production and help offset its higher cost compared with conventional jet fuel. READ MORE

Net-Zero 2050 Target Moves Sustainability Up On Aviation Agenda (Aviation Week)

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